


Our Dreams and Our Memories

by jehane18



Series: West End Men [2]
Category: Les Misérables RPF, Sheytoons (Band)
Genre: Best Friends, First Love, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Mutual Pining, Old Friends, Open Relationships, Polyfidelity, Songfic, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:50:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7609801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane18/pseuds/jehane18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the 2016 concert at the Palladium, Ramin and Hadley steal a moment together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Dreams and Our Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esteven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteven/gifts), [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> For esteven, who linked me to [this vid of the boys messing up "Empty Chairs" spectacularly at the Palladium earlier this month](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XINF_GKvYaI), and for esteliel, who was there and instrumental ;) Beta by kissontheneck.

"Dreaming?" Ramin said, gently, running his fingers through Hadley's tousled hair, blond and static-y and flyaway as a child's. 

Hadley had curled on the leather seat in the town car, head in Ramin's lap. The electric lights of Picadilly Circus slid over him in blue and red. His hand had been propped over his face since they'd gotten in. "I am so sorry," he said, his voice muffled.

Ramin bent over him and whispered teasingly in his ear: "Great, _now_ he's sorry. What happened to the casual hands-in-our-pockets, don't-give-a-fuck attitude of a couple'a hours ago?"

"Left it on stage with the rest of my pride. I'm a moron," Hads said. "I should henceforth have all song lyrics projected onto my forehead or tattooed on my skin."

Ramin ran a proprietorial hand over his friend's neck and exposed arms, the English-rose skin unmarred by ink of any kind. "Prefer you this way. Don't go doing anything to yourself without checking with me."

"Duly noted. Sir," Hadley said, deadpan, and then he snorted and pulled Ramin down into a kiss.

Ramin cupped his friend's clean-shaven jaw and kissed back. He hadn't really been in London for an uninterrupted stretch or been in the same city as Hadley since they were both on at the Queens' four years ago, before _Coriolanus_ had happened to Hadley and Broadway had swept Ramin up and blown him across North America and Asia and hadn't set him down.

Until now, until this summer, the long weeks under the Tuscan sun with his family, and then these precious days rehearsing to play music with this man.

Maybe they ought to have spent more time rehearsing "Empty Chairs", but the Sheytoons songs always got Hadley riled up, and more often than not they'd ended up cutting short their studio time this past week so Hads could shove him into the corner of the wardrobe room or up against a wall in the executive loo and use his hands and mouth to make the case for playing truant.

It wasn't a problem, of course. It was impossible to be angry with Hadley; he'd cracked up helplessly on stage when his boy couldn't remember the words but kept on singing ridiculously anyway with an expression of bemusement on his face, in the same way the audience couldn't help cracking up and forgiving them too.

And, really, who could be angry with Hadley Fraser when he could stand in the curve of Ramin's arm and wind that incomparable voice around Ramin's in harmonies and counterpoints which they hadn't rehearsed, which came from that special instinct within Hadley that no one else had -- from his matchless talent, from his knowledge of every part of Ramin, from the years of making music at Ramin's side.

They'd endured no end of ribbing from the band, of course, and from the fans who had pitched up in the crowd later. Hadley had ended up buying beers for everyone. Ramin was still doing zero carb, but he had figured half a pint wouldn't kill him.

Hadley gripped Ramin's shirt collar more tightly now to make him concentrate on kissing. Ramin had to smile against his lips. Hadley hadn't always been this forceful, he'd learned it from Aufidius and from Tom, and truth be told, Ramin couldn't get enough of it.

"Exactly how sorry are you?" Ramin enquired between kisses.

"Truly, madly, deeply, fuckingly sorry."

"Is that right," Ramin drawled, and pulled off; he rubbed his hand down Hadley's broad chest to his denim-covered prick. "How about you show me how that kind of sorry looks like."

"That was the idea." Hadley had accepted his share of the night's door cut in two post-Brexit-rated nights at the Langham Hotel on Regent Street. Rosalie had spent the first one encamped in the rose petal-covered bubble bath, and then she'd decamped back to final rehearsals on Propeller's _Taming of the Shrew_ at the Watermill where she'd just been named one of its Associate Artists. There'd been tacit acceptance all round that Ramin would get the second night, and he intended to make full use of his sloppy seconds.

The abrupt sound of wheels on gravel at Portland Place brought them both up short. Ramin settled the fare with the driver and then poured our into the art deco lobby of the Victorian grande dame.

The famous Artesian bar was buzzing with the obnoxiously loud Savile-Row-suited banker-lawyer-business crowd that London seemed to specialise in, all actively engaged in drowning their Brexit and Boris Johnson-related woes. Nothing could be further from their scene. Ramin knew Hadley had the book smarts for an alternative career, had a university degree and a masters', even. Ramin knew his own limitations; knew, also, that nothing would have prevented him from making music. It was nothing the blokes in pin-stripes would know or care about, but it was the truth of his own life.

Ramin insisted on jogging up the stairs in the main building to Hads' third floor suite. He was pleased to note that Hadley managed to keep up with him -- Hads'd gotten into shape to play the _Coriolanus_ fight scenes credibly, and it looked as if he'd kept up with at least some of the skipping and cardio. He leaned against the doorframe, bright hair standing on end but otherwise looking as if he'd barely broken a sweat.

"I never thanked Tom and Josie for getting you into training, and for all this," Ramin said teasingly, resting his hand against Hadley's chest and stomach muscles. 

"Pish, mine don't hold a candle to these now, do they?" Hadley took hold of Ramin around the obliques and pressed against the six pack which had taken Ramin months to build and years to maintain. "How is it that we're both in better shape now than ten years ago?"

"Some things get just better with age," Ramin said smugly, and let Hadley manhandle him into the room.

 

 

Ramin had lived out of enough suitcases and hotel rooms for two lifetimes, but as hotel rooms went this one was pretty sweet: thick silver-grey carpeting, large bay window opening to views of Portland Place in summer, the wide four poster bed turned down neatly, red rose petals scattered across the starched sheets. Management had provided a bottle of Perrier-Jouet on ice. Clearly someone had given them the impression that Hadley was here on his honeymoon.

"Damn," Ramin said, lowering himself onto the rose-strewn sheets. "Don't remember you asking me to marry you."

Hadley paused in the act of kicking his shoes of and flinging his jacket on the couch. "Pretty sure I did that when we were first together? And you told me bigamy was a criminal offence."

"I did?" Ramin frowned, trying to remember. He'd been so young when he'd first met Hads, but he'd been even younger when he'd met Mandy and been swept off his feet by her. He'd married her, they'd had their boys, and Hadley had always been in their lives. "Was it that time in the rafters at the Palace before we were due to go on?"

Hadley said, as he dug keys and random cards and guitar picks out of his pockets and deposited them on the bureau, "With Mike Sterling's 'Who Am I' rising round us, and me wondering if you'd let me come before I had to go on for the Robbery scene? Memorable, but no. Before, in the poky Shepherd Bush flat I had in those days. Remember?"

Ramin did: the peeling 1970s wallpaper, the Chinese take-out dinners, the lumpy mattress on which Hadley used to kiss him until they both forgot the cold, where after the second round he'd swear he'd be with Hads forever. "You know I'd've said yes if I could," he said.

"I know, love," Hadley said, and crawled onto the bed to straddle Ramin's lap.

 

 

Tonight Hadley came to him cloaked in the memories of a thousand West End shows, a hundred Sheytoons concerts, and too few stolen nights across the years. 

He kissed Ramin and it was like the first time they'd kissed, in the foyer of the Royal Academy of Music when they'd been boys barely out of their teens; like the last time they'd kissed, before the car, waiting to go on in the wings of the Palladium stage. Those pink lips, the clever swipe of tongue, the way Hads kissed the corner of Ramin's mouth and then sucked on Ramin's lower lip that went straight to Ramin's prick.

"Fuckingly sorry, you say?" Ramin murmured, cupping Hads' arse through his jeans. 

Hadley hissed through his teeth. "I think I did say that. Would you like to?"

"Always. Take this off," and Hadley sat up to pull off his t-shirt and peel his jeans off his hips. Ramin helped; between them they also made quick work of Ramin's concert clothes. 

Hadley gave a helpless sigh when Ramin was naked, and started to run his fingers across Ramin's pectoral muscles and down his sternum. "Didn't you and the boys just spend weeks living off gelato and pasta? Where'd it all go?"

"My body is an efficient machine," Ramin said smugly, then had to breathe in sharply as Hadley palmed a nipple and took hold of Ramin's hardening prick.

"It's true, you're not human. What've you done with the real Ramin?" Hadley started to stroke him, wringingly slow, from the root to swollen crown. Ramin swore and spread his legs to give Hads more access. 

"You'd know it's me, really me. Other people might not know, but you would."

"It's true that nobody feels like this," Hadley remarked. Ramin knew what he meant: Hadley's grip on his cock was as familiar as Ramin's own, the same callouses on his fingers from years of flat-picking his guitar at Ramin's side, the thumb fitting into the indentation below the ridge of Ramin's crown perfectly as if he was born to jack Ramin off. 

Ramin said between clenched teeth, "Your hand was made for this. As was your arse," and Hadley made a needy sound as Ramin palmed his buttocks and ran thick fingers down his cleft to circle his hole. 

They hadn't had the time to do this yet this month; with their families and West End Live and rehearsals for the show, they'd had to make do with stolen kisses and handjobs and getting on their knees for each other in the studio, and Ramin thought if he didn't finally get to fuck Hads properly this one night he might actually go crazy.

"Is that right," Hads said thickly. "Come on, don't hang about."

"Right then," Ramin said, and scooped Hads around the waist and slung him onto his back on the bed. There were complimentary lube and condoms on the nightstand; housekeeping had placed a rosebud beside these romantic implements of newlywed bliss. "Have to say, you don't sound very much like my blushing virgin bride."

Hadley was tight, so tight, the ring of muscle unyielding as if it hadn't been breached in months. Ramin tried his best to go slowly, to slide his forefinger incrementally and give Hadley time to adjust, but it was no easy feat with Hads swearing and thrashing and biting his fist, flushed dick fully hard between his thighs. Ramin added his middle finger, thrusting in to the second knuckle, and Hadley let out a broken moan.

"Goddamn, though, but you feel like a virgin right enough." 

Hadley gasped, rocking back on his fingers, "It's been a while. And I was, anyway, when we first did this."

They'd been virgins for each other, of course. The first time he'd come so hard inside Hadley's body he'd cried, overwhelmed by this new and terrifying love, and Hads had cried too.

Ramin leaned down and kissed his friend, soft and slow. "I remember that first time," he said. "We were both so drunk, so nervous... are you shaking, love?"

"Yeah," Hadley said, between kisses. "You make me so nervous still, isn't that a thing? Known you longer'n anyone, and damned if you still make me weak every time."

There wasn't anything Ramin could say to this; he felt ridiculously close to tears, so in love with this man it made his throat close. "Ready?" he whispered.

"Yeah, come on," Hadley whispered back, winding his arms around Ramin's neck, tilting his hips to Ramin's hungrily, and both of them moaned as Ramin slid himself home.

"Fuck, Hads," Ramin panted, fighting for control, "you weren't kidding that no one's been here in a while."

Hadley said, choking, bracing his legs against Ramin's waist, "No one since you, not since January."

Ramin smiled, remembering that Islington concert and the dressing room after, and then stilled for a moment. "And before that?" he asked, teasingly, moving his hips in a grinding circle at the rim of Hads' hole.

"Ahh, you bastard," Hadley panted, trying to pull him in closer. "Tom, there was Tom, we went away when Rosie was in Manchester for _Wonderland_. It was great, but he's not you."

Ramin smirked and took hold of Hadley's prick, gently stroking his thumb over its crown in the way he knew Hadley craved. "I'm glad you feel there's a difference, love."

"Come on now, don't make me beg," Hadley gasped, arching desperately into his touch. "No one feels like this, no one but you."

Ramin grinned, bracing himself against his forearms to take most of his own weight, making his thrusts slow and languid, letting Hadley's body relax and take in every inch of his greedy prick. "Truly, madly, deeply, and whatever the last one was?" 

"Can't remember." Hadley's eyes had slid half-shut, the way when he was lost in music, that gorgeous upper register pouring out of him in an instinctive wave. His bright hair stuck to his sweaty forehead like a dandelion clock. His broad body enfolded Ramin's, submitting to Ramin's strength, and with one last stroke Ramin buried himself to the hilt between Hadley's thighs.

"Ah, God," Ramin said, overcome with his closeness to this man, entirely open for him at last, after so long. It was so good, beyond good, he knew he was trembling himself with the effort of keeping himself in check. Desire racked through him like an insistent guitar riff, like the pulsing tempo of thunder ropes at the gym: he started to thrust in earnest in time to the staccato rhythm of his need.

Hadley said, fiercely, "Yeah, like this," fastening his hands at the back of Ramin's neck and pulling him in for a messy kiss that had them both gasping against each other's mouths. "No one does this, it's only you. It's all for you, love, if you want it." 

"I do, I want it, I want everything." Ramin groaned, feeling himself hurtle towards the cliff of his own making. Usually he had better control than this; he'd generally managed to get hold of himself in his hair-trigger twenties, these days he could go so long he'd wring Mandy out three, maybe four times before coming himself, but tonight, in bed with his best friend, the other half of him, he knew he wouldn't last. "Damn, it's been so long," he choked, feeling Hadley's heels lock against his spine, and then he was crying out and coming in a hot, helpless blaze.

He collapsed into Hadley's arms afterwards, a dead weight, panting as if he'd run a marathon. So much for gallantly holding himself off his lover: Ramin could barely think, let alone get his muscles to move.

"Now who's the blushing virgin," Hadley snorted. He kissed Ramin's sweaty hair. Ramin could feel Hads' hard prick press against Ramin's own belly, urgently demanding attention.

Ramin felt wrecked, totally finished from his orgasm, but he wasn't going to let that stop him. "Goddamn it, let me catch my breath and we're going again."

"You've always had a second round in you for me," Hadley drawled. "First round tears, second round promises, is that right?"

"Something like that." Ramin's eyes were stinging after all, old habits died hard. He let Hadley cup his face and kiss his eyelids. "I'm so not done with you."

"That right?" Hadley's voice was unsteady as well. "Thank God. I don't know what I'd do if you were." 

Ramin had to close his eyes, feeling the ache of living like this, apart from this man and the moments they could cobble together. "Never," he whispered. His body, spent as it was, stirred despite itself; his heart yearned to be even closer to Hadley. "I want more."

He reached for Hads, amidst the sweat and lube and rose petals that stuck to their bare skin. "I want you to fuck me," he said; Hadley made a strangled noise and his prick throbbed painfully in Ramin's grasp in response.

"Ramin..."

"Please," Ramin said, and Hadley shifted his weight, flipping Ramin in a stage-fight trick all theatre people knew, so their positions were reversed. He bracketed Ramin's hips with his thighs as he fumbled amongst the roses on the side table for a condom.

Ramin muttered, "You don't need to do much. I've had folks over, before January and since."

"Is that right," growled Hads again. He held Ramin down, putting all his weight on Ramin's shoulders, and as Ramin lifted his hips to him he slid into place.

The breath hissed out of Ramin; he made a wrecked sound that matched Hadley's. They used to switch off like this all the time in their twenties, in their days in the chorus and waiting tables in between, when time stretched out before them and enveloped them in a fragile, cocooning bubble, the time before families and the propulsion of their careers, when there was nothing in the whole world but the both of them and their shining new love. 

"So good," Hads said, "so easy, you were always made for me."

Ramin found he couldn't speak. Hadley's large prick stretched him, filled him so completely it closed out the world and the spinning rush of time passing. The moments slowed, drew themselves out as if they were an extended series of notes strung together on a ligature chain, and Hadley slowed as well, insistent and intense, hair falling into his eyes as he held Ramin down and fucked into him like a coda.

Then Hads loosed a frantic, low-pitched snarl and time started to speed up again. Ramin felt the hunger coil in Hadley's body, the loss of control that started to unwind in the long muscles of Hads' thighs and belly. Hadley started to thrust more and more desperately, nothing soft or drawn out now, a dirty drum line driving through him that he'd learned from Tom or from being Aufidius or whatever he'd channelled to be able to fuck Ramin like this, like a stranger and at the same time as achingly familiar to Ramin as his own heartbeat.

Hadley shouted his name, as if someone had branded it on his skin with hot iron, and then he collapsed like he'd been shot.

Eventually Ramin found his voice again, together with the use of his limbs. He ran the chrome taps of the massive porcelain tub, filling it with bath salts and rose petals, and then manhandled his friend into the hot water.

Hads was as sleepy and pliant as a child; he sank into the water with a satisfied sigh. The tub was massive, large enough to hold two grown men comfortably. Small wonder Rosie had spent all of yesterday soaking in it.

Speaking of the lady... "How's _Taming of the Shrew_ going?" Ramin asked, beginning to wash Hadley's back.

Hads said, "Late rehearsals tonight. She said she was knackered and trying to get an early night. Early start tomorrow. She's probably in dreamland right now. You know Rosie, not enough sleep and she turns into Katherine of Padua."

"Bless her," Ramin said. He ran the loofah over Hadley's shoulders, and Hadley fidgeted in pleasure.

"What're Mandy and the boys doing this weekend?"

Ramin had kissed them after the show before putting them into the car. "Zoo tomorrow, I think, early start for us too. Shouldn't be a problem. Mands called earlier when we were in the pub: one chapter of _Horrid Henry Goes to the Farm_ and the kids went down, good as gold."

"Perfect. We should have them all over again when you're in New York," Hadley said, and leaned back against Ramin's chest.

"Appreciate it. Mands gets lonely sometimes when I'm away." Ramin was blessed, beyond blessed: that his woman knew how much he loved his man, that she didn't begrudge them these stolen moments, that she even loved the man herself with her own brand of fierce loyalty. That they all belonged to each other, bound together with invisible cords forged in their shared and splendid youth.

"When're you away again?" Hadley kept his voice light, but the casual tone couldn't mask the miles of hurt and yearning that had gone before him.

Ramin felt the gulf yawning within him. Despite the trajectory of his career, despite the eagerness to be in North America again, there was the familiar ache, the emptiness that came from knowing he'd be away from his family and Hadley and his home. "This time next week."

Hadley leaned his head against Ramin's shoulder; he pulled Ramin's arms around him. He rubbed slow circles into Ramin's wrists, and Ramin felt some of the desperate yearning subside. After a while, Hadley ventured, "Are you going to see Will?"

Ramin took Hads' hands in his. "Will's busy being a pirate somewhere. Kober's gonna come sing with me at BB King's, though."

"Do I need one more person to be jealous of?" Hadley asked. Ramin knew he was mostly kidding; Hadley wasn't the jealous sort. Still, even the most secure of men and lovers got occasionally jumpy when they went half a year without seeing each other.

Ramin cupped Hadley's face, turned it so he could kiss him gently on the mouth. "You need never be jealous of anyone, love. You know you're the one for me."

"I do know that," Hadley said. "It's just, there's never enough time."

Ramin knew that, and it made him sombre as well as they towelled themselves off, as they kicked the dirty upper sheets off their bed and burrowed under the clean lower ones.

There would always be spaces inside him that only Hadley could fill. The intervals in his music that were crafted for the clever notes of Hads' acoustic guitar, the interstital breaths of his song made for Hadley's instinctive harmonies and storyteller's voice, the wide sweep of stage at his side open for Hadley to step up to the mic, into the spotlight. The Hadley-shaped emptiness in his arms, in his heart. 

Tomorrow morning there would be his boys and his Mandy, with her full house and loneliness, her beauty and her exhausted grace. There would be Rosie and her dreams and her games of make believe that Hadley adored. Their lives were full of happiness no one had to steal.

And then the whirlwind would sweep him up again and he would find himself in Tokyo or Toronto or New York, and sometimes living like this, away from the boys and Mandy and Hads, always Hads, felt as if it was tearing him apart.

But he would hold tonight in his heart: a night of moments stolen from the whirlwind, that would see them through and keep them together, always.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and angst from that heartbreaking Sheytoons number, "Steal Our Moments", [which these two sang, heartbreakingly, at the Palladium](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YC35J0gzUhU) as well. These guys, they wreck me every time they sing together.  
>  _Every night and every day this is what we do_  
>  _Steal our moments when we can and it sees us through_  
>  _I don't want to live like this tearing my soul apart_  
>  _In the end we must exist what we hold in our hearts_
> 
> Ramin and Hadley tryst at [the Langham Hotel](http://www.langhamhotels.com/en/the-langham/london/dining/artesian/) on Portland Place, a stone's throw from the Palladium. But first they decamp to one of the Shaftsbury Avenue pubs, their old stomping ground from their days at Les Mis' Queens Theatre, and it's on their way back from there that we set our scene.


End file.
